


And We Were Kissing Girls In Fall Out Shelters

by gala_apples



Category: Glee
Genre: Advice, Background Relationships, Coming Out, Demisexuality, F/F, Gen, Non-Nuclear Family, Pansexual Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 18:12:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quinn teaches her she can keep her sexuality to herself, Puck teaches her she can cram it down everyone's nose if she wants to, her mom will give her every QUILTBAG contact she's made in her thirty years of musical theatre, and everyone reminds her she's loved for who she is.</p><p>Written for Queer Fest's prompt <i>parent/child bonding over their sexuality</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	And We Were Kissing Girls In Fall Out Shelters

Beth loves her mom because every daughter loves their mother. The nice thing about her life is that Beth actually likes her mom too. Not all of her friends can say that. 

A big part of the reason they work well together is their bluntness. A lot of people get offended by it, but it’s what makes her mom a great vocal coach and choreographer, and what makes herself a great blogger. They both understand that the truth might hurt in the short term, but coddling hurts in the long run. It’s the same reason why Mom doesn’t have a great relationship with her biodaughter. Rachel expects be coddled. Her dads raised her on a diet of _you’ll be a star_ and _you’re better than everyone else_ and _anyone that doesn’t love you is stupid_. Beth doesn’t suffer from low self-esteem, far from it, but she can’t think of a single time that Mom put her on a pedestal without also giving her the knowledge that she’d be knocked off it eventually.

The only time bluntness doesn’t work for Beth is when she needs to have a variety of ways of approach in her arsenal. Mom’s not great at putting herself in other people’s shoes. It’s why Beth puts down her book when Mom gets home from her studio and meets her in the kitchen. Beth swings open the fridge door for her so she can get the container of apple juice out. Having a glass is always the first thing done when she gets in, has been as long as Beth can remember. Beth prefers raspberry juice, and her mom knows that, so she doesn’t bother to offer her some.

“What’s up, kiddo? You don’t normally breakfast in bed me.”

“Technically I didn’t pour the glass or bring it to you.”

“You’ve still got something to say.”

“I need you to hook me up with some gay people.” 

Most parents would start with _what_ before moving on to _why_. Mom does the favour of not pretending she didn’t hear. “Why?”

“I need to talk to gay people and I know you have access.” It’s the twenties, there are out people at her school. But as an only child with a single parent Beth’s gotten a lot of mileage from having adults as friends and she’d really rather have this conversation with mature people. And her mom does have tons of access. She works in musical theatre.

“Anything you want to talk to me about?”

“Not until after I talk to gay people.” 

Mom nods and doesn’t push it any further. Beth didn’t think she would. They understand each other.

She doesn’t say a single word about it until after dinner when she asks if Beth is free on Saturday. She says yes, simultaneously disappointed that she has to wait so long and happy it’s so soon. Theatre people have tight schedules.

“I’ve made three appointments. You’re having lunch, then coffee, then getting your nails done. It’ll take up most of your allowance, but I hope you find what you want.”

Beth does too.

Lunch is at Breadstix. Beth waits in the lobby, fiddling with the volume on her iPod. The hostess is glaring at her because she can’t say which party she’s with, or if she has reservations. Beth gets petty revenge by pacing over the freshly mopped floor. Her sneakers are dirty as fuck, mud still caked on the sides from skipping last period yesterday to dance on the soccer field in the rain with Georgie and Kara and Alexander. Kara was definitely on something, but George is just the best dancer she’s ever seen, and that’s saying something considering Beth’s seen about ten thousand male dancers since her infancy.

It’s to her immense surprise that Quinn walks in. Beth hasn’t seen her bio-mom since junior high. They exchange paper cards at Christmas and birthdays but it’s been at least three years since the last face to face contact. Legally speaking it’s supposed to be a lot more than that. Beth’s not supposed to have in person contact with either of them, not until she’s eighteen. The last time Mom tried, when she was still a baby, Quinn and Puck both made a huge mess of it, bad enough that she couldn’t give them a second chance. But Quinn’s cards still go on the Christmas card wreath in the hallway, so that has to count for something.

“Did my mom send you, or is this a coincidence? You here for me?”

Quinn doesn’t wince. Beth didn’t think she would. Aside from the time she went crazy when she was a teenager trying to get her back, Quinn’s always been the bioparent less interested in contacting her. She knows how weird it is that they’re meeting.

“She told me you wanted to talk about sexuality.” Quinn looks at the hostess. “Reservation for two, under Corcoran.”

Beth rolls her eyes at herself for being stupid. She should have tried that.

They get their menus and complimentary waters. Quinn tries to start chit-chat with a comment that the Breadstix in Lima looks identical, but Beth’s not having that. Chit-chat is on par with coddling and voluntarily taking more science courses for the things she just doesn’t do.

“So what do you know about it? Being gay.” Quinn has a husband. A husband who really should have taken her last name because now they’re forever Quinn and Warren LaBrin.

“Just this- I identify as heterosexual. But I’ve had sex with women, more than once.”

Beth crosses her arms, the immediately uncrosses them and grabs onto her water glass. If this gets phobic she’ll just throw her water at Quinn, then use the distraction to walk out. “So you’re born again? Found God, and a man to love?”

“I never lost God.”

Beth tenses.

“No, wait. That came out wrong. I’m not a Fundie, I didn’t have conversion therapy. I just. Okay, look, I don’t know what faith Shelby raised you in, or if she did at all. I always make sure to send really generic cards though, the same that I would send to Rachel, or Ismat. I was raised very Catholic, and the first time I messed up, for a while I thought I was doomed. Then I realised that God loves. He does. And sexual orientation has nothing to do with that.”

Beth relaxes her grip. Not a bad as she thought. But still, this isn’t what she wanted. “I asked to talk to gay people and you said you identify straight. This really isn’t-”

“I think I need to clarify. Again. Wow, I’m really making a mess out of this, aren’t I?” She laughs in a cute way that’s supposed to bind people to her will. It doesn’t affect Beth. She doesn’t tend to be manipulated with lies, just bends under well applied truth.

“My label is one of those long ones that’s easier to not talk about. I’m married, so it doesn’t come up anyway. But your mom said you needed to talk, and she had this checklist when I last saw you about the things I would and wouldn’t be willing to talk about with you should you ever want to.”

Beth thinks about her mom for a second and isn’t very surprised. She would totally bombard someone she hadn’t seen in over a decade with a many paged checklist if she thought it was for the benefit of someone she cared about. “What’s your label, then.”

“Heteroromantic bi-demisexual.”

Beth crosses her arms again. It’s like she’s heard _of_ those words, but not clearly enough to know what the fuck Quinn is talking about. But she can’t quite admit to being ignorant, so she just doesn’t say anything.

“To unpack a little, demisexual is when you only have sexual desire towards people you have an emotional connection to. Which isn’t necessarily love, deep friendship works too. It takes awhile to build up. I like having sex with women I have a connection to, my first time was with a girl I’d known as a friend for five years. I enjoy it a lot more than having sex with men. But I find it hard, impossible, really, to be romantic with a woman. I love men. I always have, maybe a bit more than is good for me.”

Beth watches Quinn take a sip of water. She waits until she’s swallowed before asking the question foremost in her mind. “Does your husband know? That you don’t want him?”

Quinn shakes her head. “You’re fifteen. Arousal is key, right now. Unless you’re ace or demi, but that wasn’t the impression I got. Are you?”

“I definitely want to have sex with the friend I’ve known five years. Although it’s actually more like nine.” Beth met Kara in first grade, and they became friends at Halloween, when they both, along with three other girls, were dressed as the latest Disney princess. The other three girls had completely lost their shit that they were being copied. Beth, pragmatic even then, had remembered that her mom had warned her it would happen. Kara, on the other hand, had sci fi junkie parents, and had said excitedly that they were all clones.

“Well, that length of time does actually leave room for demi, but I’ll finish my point anyway. Teenagers generally react with bodies, not their heads. When you’re older commitment will matter as much as lust, and I can commit to romance the way I can’t to lust.”

That makes sense, sort of. It’s like how people in arranged marriages always end up loving each other.

“My first, her name was Santana. I don’t regret it, not for a moment. If I wasn’t married I’d consider doing it again. But she’d never give me flowers, and I would never take them from her. I wouldn’t _want_ her to even try. Warren rubs my feet every night when I get home from work. We have jokes that it might cause him carpal tunnel. It’s just better, for me. You need to figure out what’s better for you, regardless of what other people want.”

They talk for nearly an hour. Mostly about Kara, and how Jenny is stupid-hot and definitely bi, but has a habit of vidding her encounters and Beth doesn’t really want to be on the internet. Even though it’s not like back in Quinn’s day when sex vids were super scandalous and would ruin her chances of getting a job, Beth’s just not into the idea. Not her kink. They also talk about what it’s like sleeping with girls, the smells and tastes and feelings, the stuff you can’t get from even 3-d porn. Beth exits that conversation turned on and kind of wanting to jump the hot redhead eating with her family three booths away.

Only when the people in the booth behind Quinn stand and leave does she shake her head and check the time. “Wow, I. My lunch break is nearly over. I’ve really got to leave. Can I drive you to the bus stop?”

Beth shrugs. “Actually I’m only going like six blocks away.”

“Then I should have the time to take you, unless you want to walk that?”

“I kinda do. Nothing personal.” She just needs time to think about what Quinn told her before she gets a new packet of info from the next person she’ll be talking to.

“Oh. Okay. I’ll-” Quinn trails off, clearly not sure where the boundaries of this goodbye are, if the lines have changed at all. Beth decides to help her out.

“Send me another card. A e-card, or email, maybe.”

The only adult in Secret Agent Coffee that Beth recognises is Puck. He’s got a tablet sitting on the small circular table in front of him, and seems pretty focused on whatever’s on it. Beth is both surprised and not surprised. After Quinn it makes sense to include her other bioparent. It just doesn’t make sense because she knows Puck, kind of, and he’s not gay. Or at least he’s never tweeted about liking men. Of course, if she’s being fair, neither has she.

“I like girls,” she says as she sits at his table, just to get it out of the way. She still wants to talk to gay people, but she doesn’t mind just spending time with her biodad for a while. They have each other followed on Twitter and they’re both pretty avid tweeters, so Beth feels like she knows him fairly well, has a general idea of what he’s doing on an hourly basis. But Puck’s just not an emailer, even though he tries, and she’s always figured that they’ll get into the stuff that takes more than 140 characters when she turns eighteen and can see him legally.

“How would you like me to react?”

Beth raises her eyebrows. “Come on.” Like that’s not the biggest cop-out in the world. He owes her a little better than that.

“I’m serious. People come out for a lot of reasons. They want to have sex, they’re tired of lying, they want people to feel sorry for their automatically harder lives, they want to show support for someone else, they want to use their orientation as a means to fight. I don’t care what your reason is. I was younger than you when I started having sex, lying is both fun and exhausting, most minorities get the shit end of the stick, activism is good, and so is shoving your differentness in front of someone’s stuck up nose and telling them to deal or fuck off. So yeah. Tell me why you’re coming out, how you want me to react, and I’ll be your foil.”

“I don’t know. It’s not about dropping a bomb on casually ignorant people. I-”

Puck interrupts her, pinning her with a look. “You get that it can be, though. Until everyone’s gender and orientation assumptions are ‘I don’t know, I should ask’ or ‘I don’t know and it’s not my business’ sometimes dropping ‘I’m LGBT’ can derail those fuckers.”

“Is that what you do? Use your sexuality as a weapon?”

“Sometimes, yeah. You follow my twitter, you know I meet a lot of people for my job. Sometimes you need to.”

For someone who seems pretty aggressive about letting people know who he is in bed, Puck hasn’t actually told her yet. Well, herself and Twitter, but if potential clients check him out it would ruin the surprise of bringing it up in conversation, so Beth understands that silence in that arena. “How do you identify?”

“Pan. Pan and poly,” he adds easily. “Finn and I have a house together, he’s my home base. But I’ve never been good at long term monogamy, and he knows that. Actually it’s true for him too. He cheated on his first three girlfriends at least. Having a few people in cities I go to frequently helps, and he’s got his people too.”

“But you love him?”

“I love him more than anything. And I’ve loved him forever. Since way before I had a foursome with some genderqueer people and had the ‘guys are also welcome in my pants’ epiphany. When I was a teenager I did some real pulling pigtails shit trying to get him riled up.”

Beth’s pretty sure that includes the conception of her, but that can be a conversation for another day. “I’m gonna get a tea. You want something?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

By the time she’s putting her disposable mug on the table Puck’s got his tablet stashed away, and a new line of questioning in his head. “So who’s this girl that makes you want to tell the world to fuck off so you can get some alone time with?”

“Her name is Kara. She’s my best friend. She’s perfect, except for the ways she’s not, but those things are perfect too. But it doesn’t matter. She’s not a lesbian.” Fuck, if only she was a lesbian. Beth’s life would be like fifteen times better. If Kara was a lesbian and science class wasn’t compulsory until the end of junior year Beth could die happy.

“You’re not necessarily doomed. Just because she hasn’t been with a girl yet doesn’t mean she’s one hundred percent straight. When I was fifteen I was six months from getting your biomom pregnant because I was busy fucking that many girls, being that intensely masculine and hetero. And I’ve been with Finn for eleven years now. Nearly twelve. Not necessarily saying she’ll be your happily ever after either, but unless you’ve straight up asked how she feels about kissing a girl you don’t know.”

“Should I sing old school Katy Perry to her?”

Puck meets her sarcasm with a overly stupid grin. “Don’t ask me. I was in Glee. I sing about every situation.”

“You’re worse than my mom. She only criticizes the singing, you actually do it.”

Puck laughs. “Don’t front, you love it.”

Beth has to laugh too. She loves old slang, and that’s from the early oh’s at least.

Unlike Quinn, when it’s time to leave Puck he throws out his arms for a hug. Beth gives him one, and wonders if in a different life his overpowering cologne would smell like home.

“You want a ride to wherever you’re going next? I’ve got a while.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m gonna walk.” Or take a cab if she gets lazy. It just doesn’t seem fair to decline Quinn’s offer and accept Puck’s.

“Thanks for, you know. Everything.”

Puck shakes his head, mohawk flopping over before settling back into place. “If you listen to fuck all of what I say, remember this, ‘kay? You should never have to thank people for treating you like a human being, for respecting you. You fucking command that shit, and if someone doesn’t you fuck them in the eye.”

Beth bursts into laughter. It’s a bit rude, maybe, since he’s being dead serious, but she can’t help it. His life lessons are so awesomely phrased that she wants to tweet them.

The manicurist shop has impressive airbrushing on the front window. It’s a trite tropical scene with water and palm trees, but Beth doesn’t have much of a hand for art, not like Alexander and Kara. Xan stretches his own canvases for graffiti, and he’s allowed her just enough of a chance with his spray paint to know how fucking hard translating the image in your head to a background five by five feet is. Boring design or not, it’s flawlessly rendered.

It’s also the reason Beth doesn’t see her third speaker until she gets inside. Every chair inside the shop is full, workers on one side of the table, clients on the other, leaving her mom and two others to sit in the small cluster of chairs against the window.

“Mom? What are you doing here?”

“I told you a few days ago, your third talk is at the manicurist. Which, I suppose we might as well start now. I was going to wait until they were buffing our nails, but they’re pretty backed up.”

“You’re straight.”

“Yes.”

Beth’s hands land naturally on her hips. “It was pretty heavily implied I would be talking to gay people.”

“And maybe I originally had Christiene planned. But the more I thought about it, the more I was sure Quinn and Puck could cover what you needed to know, and I wanted some time with my daughter. Was I right?”

Probably. Mostly. Over the last few hours Beth’s gotten a lot more of an idea about if and how she wants to come out. She appreciates the chance she’s had to talk to both of them. She’s just surprised that her mom was willing to give her them. Or more specifically, give them _her_. “I thought you hated them?”

“What they did was stupid and cruel. Quinn trying to get CPS called, Puck trying to seduce me, they were horrible actions. But they were because they wanted you, and given some time to heal it’s hard to blame them for wanting you.”

“So can I talk to them again?” Quinn lives in Cleveland, and it’s Puck’s ‘home base’. Talking to them on the phone wouldn’t even cost long distance rates. But price of a call won’t be her mom’s objection, if she has one, Beth knows that.

Mom rolls her eyes. “Like I don’t know you talk to Puck.”

“I mean real talking.” Having to continue one thought over three tweets doesn’t count, especially not now when Beth knows Puck won’t say everything he thinks on his public account.

“I kept them away from baby-you because you needed protection and I needed control. Teenager-you might learn best how to protect yourself from the world from them, and I need you happy more than I need to be in control.”

That’s a lot, coming from Mom. Aside from the bluntness and the artistic integrity, ability to control every situation is another reason her mom excels in her field. It makes the top five factors, at least. 

“I love you, okay? You and only you. But I think I might like them.”

“That’s fine Beth. Totally fine. You didn’t even have to tell me what you told them. Just know I don’t care who you bring home. I love you, always.”

She hugs her mom, and her mom hugs her, and Beth just couldn’t give less of a crap that all the patrons and manicurists are watching them. She’s been given so much understanding today, and the means to get more for herself, like that old proverb about men with fish. It’s maybe the best gift her mom has ever given her.


End file.
